The spy agency GCHQ says it has developed the world's largest network of Raspberry Pi boards, which it is using to teach its own software engineers the ins and outs of parallel computing.The spy agency revealed on Wednesday its own Pi 'Bramble', the common term applied to a series of networked Pi boards, which have been used in the past to create mini-supercomputers. The GCHQ said its Bramble is the biggest ever constructed and the Pi Foundation has confirmed the record.
The creation consists of two head nodes and a cluster of eight networked 'slave' Pi units, each consisting of eight Pi model Bs that GCHQ has dubbed 'OctaPi'. With the two head nodes, its Bramble contains a total of 66 Raspberry Pi devices.
GCHQ is showing off its work at the Big Bang Fair 2015 at the NEC in Birmingham, an event that aims to inspire students with a passion for science and technology.
There was a similar exhibition (on a smaller scale) at the British Military Tournament in December 2013: http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQ-at-Tournament-great-success.aspx
There Pi cluster was running a simulation of the Enigma/Bombe process, and so demonstrated old and new technology side by side.
